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No, that was not sarcasm. Remember those pictures of stones that I showed last weekend? {click} Remember the whining I did about all that work we had ahead of us? Well, my husband acted on instinct and self-preservation and saved the day.

Picture this, Monday afternoon, there was a knock at the door. We thought it was our neighbor’s boy so Gage answered. It was a man. A enterprising man who had seen the rocks delivered and was looking for work. Greg thought it over for a few minutes and said, “Yes!” So, all this week, two hard-working men have been doing the most amazing job in our yard. They did a fantastic job. They did a WAY better job than we would have done on our own. They insisted on doing it the RIGHT way, not just the quick way. So Greg went and got gravel for a base for the retaining wall in the backyard. And, this:

became this:

They dug out the paths and put the dirt in our stone circle. We are now ready for the crushed granite paths. They cleaned up the entire backyard as well. They cleaned up ALL the redwood debris. The dug down and cleaned up the area in front of our shed. The cleaned up my abandoned compost bin — abandoned because a rat had moved into it a few years ago. The cleaned up the dead rat! They were my heros!

Then, they dug out the area in the front yard where we are putting in the retaining wall.

On top of it all, they were polite, tidy, kind to the dog and the children, and very proud of the work they had done.

This weekend, we are building the rock wall in the front — which to be honest was the ONLY part of the job I was looking forward to doing. We are hiring my nephew, Evan, and his friend, Joe to come be the muscles. My mother-in-law and Greg and I will also work alongside them. But, we didn’t have to spend a couple of days doing the miserable hard work that I would have hated. We took a chance on an enterprising immigrant and it paid off big time! Yay for us! Yay for them. Yay for making excellent snap decisions!